lt
twice as if some inquisitive individual were looking over my shoulder.
The third time I woke up with a start.

"Sir," said a shopwalker, with the utmost politeness, "a gentleman has
been waiting three quarters of an hour for the directory. Would you
kindly hand it to him if you have quite finished with it?"

It was a quarter to six. I still waited a little while, and then I left,
having wasted my day.

O Jeanne! where do you hide yourself? Must I, to meet you, attend mass
at St. Germain des Pres? Are you one of those early birds who, before
the world is up, are out in the Champs Elysees catching the first rays
of the morning, and the country breeze before it is lost in the smoke of
Paris? Are you attending lectures at the Sorbonne? Are you learning to
sing? and, if so, who is your teacher?

You sing, Jeanne, of course. You remind me of a bird. You have all
the quick and easy graces of the skylark. Why should you not have the
skylark's voice?

Fabien, you are dropping into poetry!

CHAPTER VI. THE FLOWER-SHOW

April 3d.

For a month I have written nothing in this brown notebook. But to-day
there is plenty to put down, and worth the trouble too.

Let me begin with the first shock. This morning, my head crammed with
passages from Latin authors, I leaned my brow against the pane of my
window which looks on the garden. The garden is not mine, of course,
since I live on the fourth floor; but I have a view of the big
weeping-willow in the centre, the sanded path that runs around it, and
the four walls lined with borders, one of which separates it from the
huge premises of the Carmelites. It is an almost deserted garden. The
first-floor tenant hardly ever walks there. His son, a schoolboy of
seventeen, was there this morning. He stood two feet from the street
wall, motionless, with head thrown back, whistling a monotonous air,
which seemed to me like a signal. Before him, however, was nothing but
the moss on the old wall gleaming like golden lights. People do not
whistle to amuse stones nor yet moss. Farther off, on the other side of
the street, the windows of the opposite houses stretched away in long
straight lines, most of them standing open.

I thought: "The bird is somewhere there. Some small Abigail with her
white cap will look out in a moment."

The suspicion was stupid and ill-natured. How rash are our lightest
judgments! Suddenly the school-boy took one step forward, swep